Automated emergency event notification telematics devices and systems can effectively and expeditiously directly notify 911 operators at the local Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) of a transport emergency event. The 911 PSAP operators may then dispatch emergency personnel, such as an Emergency Medical Service (EMS) team, to the site of the transport emergency event. The types of emergency events detected include those involving a crash of the vehicle or other transport and any other emergency that warrants calling 911 by activating a HELP/PANIC/MAYDAY/SOS/911 function. These transports include cars, trucks, buses, trains, motorcycles, boats, aircraft, etc. For convenience and readability, all transport entities will be referred to as ‘vehicles” herein.
The commercially available vehicle emergency notification systems, e.g., the OnStar® system from General Motors, Inc., use in-vehicle automatic crash notification (ACN) capabilities that to detect a crash and notify an associated telematics service provider (TSP) call center—but not the PSAP center. The early ACN systems relied on existing air-bag-deployment and fuel-pump-shutoff signals to ‘detect’ the crash. So-called advanced ACN (AACN) systems incorporate accelerometer data for crash detection and the telematics industry now extensively uses the AACN acronym. For readability herein, “AACN/TSP/PSAP” systems will refer to systems that involve a TSP and “AACN/PSAP” systems will refer to systems that do not. The known AACN emergency notification systems support both the HELP/MAYDAY function and the crash detection function.
With the ‘traditional’ AACN/TSP/PSAP emergency notification systems, if a crash is detected, an in-vehicle telecommunications control unit (TCU) places a voice and data call to the TSP to report the vehicle's global positioning satellite (GPS) determined location; and, in addition, to provide the TSP operator with important crash related data. These data may include: vehicle speed, crash impact magnitude, and angle of impact; the occurrence of a rollover and multiple impacts; and a computed injury severity prediction. The TSP operator then uses the vehicle location data to contact the 911 PSAP nearest to the accident location to request help. At that point, these systems may enable three-way voice communications between the vehicle occupants, the service center operator, and the 911 PSAP. Even if the occupants are unable to communicate, the location information is used to dispatch the closest emergency response services to the vehicle.
These traditional AACN/TSP/PSAP emergency notification systems, which have been used by OnStar, ATX, and Hughes TSPs, have several recognized problems. The problems with the traditional AACN/TSP/PSAP system are documented, for example, by Tom Seekins, Alan Blatt and Marie Flanigan in Characterization of Pathways for Delivery of Crash Telemetry Data to Montana, Technical Note, Montana Automatic Crash Notification Project, July 2011.
A primary problem is that the TSP-to-PSAP calls do not take advantage of the priority 911 network infrastructure but instead, these calls are received by the PSAP on non-priority administrative phone lines. These non-priority lines may be in use for routine administrative purposes. Also, since this type of TSP-to-PSAP call is not in the priority 911 queue it may simply not be answered for a long time during times of high 911 call activity. Other problems arise from the methods used by the operator at the remote TSP call center to determine the appropriate local PSAP to call based on the client vehicle's GPS location. The TSP call center's location-indexed PSAP administrative phone number directory is quite possibly out-of-date. As a result, the wrong PSAP may be called. Finally, once the appropriate TSP-to-PSAP call is achieved, the PSAP operator is required to obtain the crash/emergency location from a verbal transmission; perhaps a street address but possibly the multi-digit GPS coordinate data.
This round-about and error prone AACN-to-TSP-to-PSAP call procedure is in sharp contrast to a real 911 call to the PSAP wherein the caller's call-back number and location automatically and immediately appear on the 911 operator's display at the PSAP that is nearest to the 911 caller. After all, the US enhanced 911 (e911) system is designed to provide the PSAP operator with the caller's call-back number, i.e., the automatic number information (ANI) and the caller's location, i.e., the automatic location information (ALI)—without error and within seconds.
In summary, the traditional AACN/TSP/PSAP emergency notification systems have problems regarding the timely delivery of critical data to the PSAP operator. This critical data includes not only the victim's call-back number and the vehicle crash location, but also vehicle crash analysis data.
The importance of vehicle crash analysis data is well established. For example, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) sponsored an expert panel that provided recommendations for enhancing the AACN/TSP/PSAP crash notification system in order to save lives and lessen serious injuries. These recommendations are documented in Advanced Automatic Collision Notification and Triage of the Injured Patient, US Dept. Health and Human Services, CDC (2008). This expert panel identified specific crash data that is important for an injury severity prediction (ISP) analysis. The expert panel also recommended a protocol for the TSP operators to use which incorporates the ISP analysis both before and after the TSP operator calls the PSAP operator.
Efforts to solve the problems associated with the traditional AACN/TSP/PSAP emergency notification system can be described as falling in one of two fundamentally different solution categories:
Solutions that improve the effectiveness of the TSP operator as an emergency call intermediary; and
Solutions that provide direct vehicle-to-PSAP emergency calls without requiring a TSP operator.
These two solution categories have different characteristics, costs, and technical challenges. The present application relates to the second solution category; direct-call AACN/PSAP emergency notification systems that do not require a TSP.
Technical approaches of the first solution category are designed to improve the effectiveness of the TSP operator as an emergency call intermediary. These approaches allow the TSP operator to initiate a 911 call from either the in-vehicle TCU or certain telecommunications network elements—eliminating the problematic TSP-to-PSAP call via a 10 digit administrative phone line. These approaches may also be attractive because they allow the TSP operator to qualify the emergency call. Section 2.2 of the NENA 07-504 (2007) document indicates approximately 13% to 20% of the emergency calls to the TSP operators are screened out and not passed on to the 911 emergency dispatch operators at the PSAP.
One of the approaches in the first solution category has been branded ‘Priority Access’ and, as discussed in Characterization of Pathways for Delivery of Crash Telemetry Data to Montana, (2011), is currently offered to US PSAPS by Intrado Inc. for service with the OnStar, ATX, and Hughes Telematics TSPs. The description of the Priority Access technology is consistent with U.S. Pat. No. 7,177,397 titled “Geographic Routing of Emergency Service Call Center Emergency Calls” assigned to Intrado. From the viewpoint of the PSAP operator, his or her equipment receives a 911 call which: 1) is identified as coming from a TSP; and 2) contains an ALI record that has been generated by the TSP. These fields can, for example, contain location data (e.g., latitude/longitude), a TSP 24×7 call-back number and the crash data analysis data.
Problems remain, however, even with these improvements to the AACN/TSP/PSAP emergency notification system. One remaining problem is that the only call-back access from the PSAP to the crash victim(s)/vehicle is still through the TSP. Another remaining problem is that the use of the TSP operator as an intermediary in the emergency event notification process introduces delay and risk. For example, consider the hypothetical question, “If I need to call 911, do I want to call somebody else and wait/depend on them to call 911, or do I want to just directly call 911?” A further remaining problem is the cost of the TSP service. The monthly or annual expense of a subscription/service contract with the TSP reduces the number of vehicle operators who participate in the AACN/TSP/PSAP emergency notification systems.
Technical approaches of the second solution category are designed to provide direct emergency calls from the in-vehicle TCU to the PSAP operator without requiring a TSP operator—or a TSP. For example, Section 3.3 of Automatic Collision Notification and Vehicle Telematics Technical Information Document (TID), by David Irwin, NENA 07-504 (2007) discusses a direct in-vehicle TCU-to-PSAP emergency call with the use of TTY communications in addition to voice.
The European Union (EU) “eCall” initiative is by far the most extensive development in the second solution category, i.e., the development of a direct-call AACN/PSAP emergency notification system that does not require a TSP. There are many documents describing eCall, for example, Harmonized eCall European Pilot, D2.1 Functional and Operational Requirements Report, ERTICO—ITS Europe, Ver. 1.0 (2011). The eCall plan has an EU mandate to require that all new vehicles sold in Europe have eCall-standards-compliant telematics—as soon as 2015. These eCall compliant telematics systems contain a high performance in-band modem and are designed to directly place a “112” voice and data emergency call to a local PSAP in the event of a vehicle crash or HELP/MAYDAY emergency.
The concept of direct 3-digit emergency calls from the in-vehicle TCU to the PSAP operator without requiring a TSP was earlier promoted in the US. For example, in the year 2000, The Recommendations of the National Mayday Readiness Initiative (NMRI), US Dept. of Transportation (2000) explicitly recommended: “Direct delivery of telematics emergency calls and data to PSAPs should be accomplished when the affected parties agree that it is feasible and will enhance public safety. ‘Direct delivery of telematics calls and data to PSAPs’ simply means that the intervention of a human being at a private call center would no longer be required.”
The NMRI was a public-private partnership of more than 20 national organizations co-sponsored by the US Department of Transportation and The ComCARE Alliance to address emergency notification issues arising between the TSPs and the PSAPs. The ‘when feasible’ part of the recommendation referred to the ability of the in-vehicle crash detection and analysis to: “ . . . function without significant levels of false positives, that crash data can distinguish between serious crashes and “fender benders”, and indeed can predict the probabilities of severe injury.”
In summary, direct-call AACN/PSAP emergency notification systems that do not require a TSP have been officially recommended in the US since 2000 by NENA, APCO and NHTSA working together via the NMRI. The fundamental requirements the NMRI placed on these direct-911-call AACN systems are that they provide: 1) a proper qualification that the crash is a true emergency event and 2) a proper computation of a probability of serious injury.
The second NMRI requirement, “a proper computation of a probability of serious injury”, is readily satisfied. The current state-of-the-art probability of serious injury computation is an improved ISP algorithm described by Douglas Kononen, Carol Flannagan and Stewart Wang, Identification and validation of a logistic regression model for predicting serious injuries associated with motor vehicle crashes, in Accident Analysis and Prevention 43 (2011). This straightforward ISP computation is based on the same crash data parameters that were previously recommended by the CDC Expert Panel in Advanced Automatic Collision Notification and Triage of the Injured Patient, US Dept. Health and Human Services, CDC (2008). These crash data parameters are measured by the OEM telematics systems required in the EU eCall initiative and also by the non-OEM (aftermarket) telematics devices and systems.
The first NMRI requirement, “that a direct-call AACN system provide a proper qualification that the crash is a true emergency event”, is more problematic and the subject of the present application. Indeed, in the AACN/TSP/PSAP emergency notification systems, this is a primary function of the TSP operator. In the direct-call AACN/PSAP emergency notification systems this function must be automated. In the eCall-compliant OEM direct-call AACN systems, this crash emergency qualification function can build upon the existing known art of ‘safing’ or ‘arming’ airbag and seatbelt pre-tensioning deployments. However, even for OEM eCall systems, the desired automatic emergency event qualification is new. For example, it is a new requirement for OEM AACN systems to determine whether a crash that does not involve an airbag deployment warrants placing a 911 emergency call. For non-OEM AACN devices and systems, the required emergency event qualification task can be even more of a challenge due to a lack of access to crush zone impact sensors and various crash related data that the vehicle's OEM has declared as proprietary.
It would be optimal to provide a direct-call AACN/PSAP emergency notification system, method and non-transitory computer readable media that automatically qualify whether a vehicle crash is an emergency event that warrants a 911 call in the US (or a 112 call in the EU). This is in contrast to the AACN/TSP/PSAP emergency notification systems which use a TSP operator to perform the emergency event qualification. The latter systems require a TSP and have an associated service contract that limits their adaptation.